we can work it out
by alessandriana
Summary: "Just for the record," Stiles says, "this does not make me the damsel in distress in this relationship." / Scott makes a face. "Duh," he says, eloquently. "You'd look terrible in a dress."


"You… got me a present?" Stiles asks.

"Yeah!" Scott says, grinning. He shakes the package enticingly at Stiles. It's wrapped- okay, _wrapped_ is a strong word, maybe _covered_ would be better- in a 60/40 mix of duct tape to actual wrapping paper. Said wrapping paper, what little he can see of it, appears to have tiny monkeys dancing across it while carrying birthday cake. Which begs the question.

"You do realize it's not actually my birthday, right? Or any other gift-giving holiday that I can think of?" Stiles pauses, struck by a thought. "Unless- are there werewolf holidays? Like, second birthdays? Anniversary of the day you got bit? Congrats-on-not-trying-to-murder-your-best-friend- for-three-weeks kinds of holidays?"

"Um." Scott replies, blinking those baffled, adorable doe-eyes. "Not that I know of? And no, it's not for your birthday, or a holiday, I just- uh. Well, open it." He shoves the package into Stiles' hands. It's small, maybe half the size of a paperback, and strangely light.

Shooting Scott a suspicious glance, Stiles tears into the present- or tries to, at least. The duct tape fails to yield to his stubby fingernails and he has to resort to a pair of scissors lying on his desk. Opening the box inside reveals a small metallic object. Stiles pulls it out and just stares, turning the object over and over in his hands.

Scott's grin starts to falter as Stiles' silence goes on too long, but Stiles is having a momentary brain freeze here, okay? He can't decide if he ought to be amused or offended, mouth working as he tries to come up with a response.

"Scott," and the laughter bubbling up in his chest is definitely winning out, "is this a rape whistle?"

"What? No!" Scott protests, flushing. "It's a dog whistle."

"And how is that any better?"

"It's in case-" Scott's voice drops, even though they're the only two in the house right now- "in case anything like Gerard happens again, alright? Just blow that, and I'll know to come running."

Stiles' hand clenches involuntarily around the whistle. For a moment he can hear the screams as the lights went out, feel the cold press of the gun against the back of his neck, the terror icing through his veins as no one noticed Gerard's goons dragging him off the darkened lacrosse field.

"Stiles?"

Stiles shakes his head, _nothing to worry about_, pries bloodless fingers apart where they'd clenched too tight around the whistle. It's sculpted to look like a dog's head, part of his brain notices absently. A wolf's, maybe, if you squint. Color rushes back into his skin, and he breathes, in and out.

A whistle would have come in handy then, if he'd had one. They'd taken his cell phone and done a brief pat-down for weapons but hadn't bothered to search him beyond that. Something small like this could easily have gone unnoticed. Maybe if he put it on a chain, pretended it was a necklace, like Lydia's key? It would be maybe a little sappy and embarrassing, but Stiles is cool with that if it means increasing his chances of survival.

He swallows to clear the dryness from his throat, tries on a smile for Scott. His nerves still feel scraped raw whenever he thinks about that night, but it's getting better. It _is_.

"So, what, I just blow it? How will you know it's me and not some other asshole with a dog whistle?"

Scott relaxes, takes the comment for the unspoken 'thank you' it is. A smile tugs at the edges of his mouth. "Maybe try S.O.S?"

"Hmm, a little too on the nose." Stiles brightens, getting into the spirit of the thing. "Maybe… Gangnam Style?"

Scott dimples. "Batman theme song?"

"Na na na na na na na na Batman!" Stiles sings, then make a face. "Too many 'na's, I think. Hungry Like the Wolf? Or, no- Werewolves of London!""

"Who Let the Dogs Out!"

"Oh, perfect!" Stiles crows. He brings the whistle to his lips to test it, missing the way Scott's eyes widen in horror.

"No, wait, not inside-!"

Too late. Stiles takes a deep breath and blows, trying to match the rhythm of the song's chorus as best he can considering he can't actually hear how it sounds.

Scott shrieks and falls off the bed, clapping his hands over his ears.

Stiles scrambles to see what happened, his upper body hanging tenuously off the edge of the bed. "Dude, you okay?" he asks, initial concern turning to amusement as he sees that Scott is fine and looking at him with a wounded puppy dog look where he's curled up on the floor, and not, like, bleeding from the ears or anything.

"WEREWOLF HEARING," Scott reminds him, loudly.

Stiles winces. "Shit, I'm sorry," he apologizes.

Scott rolls into a sitting position, wiggling a finger in his ear to stop the ringing. "S'okay," he says simply, with the easy forgiveness that is possibly Stiles' favorite thing about the guy. Stiles is well aware that he is not the easiest person in the world to deal with, always dragging the people around him along with his bad ideas, but somehow Scott puts up with his shit anyways.

Buoyed up on a wave of fondness, Stiles reaches over to ruffle Scott's goofy hair…

...and promptly falls face forward off the bed, overbalanced.

Scott is laughing at him. Stiles flops around until he can pull his feet free from where they're still caught up on the bed, tangled in the covers. His nose smarts where he smacked it into the carpet. One foot refuses to come free from the sheet that's twisted around it, so he gives up and turns around onto his back, legs still propped up on the bed. From this angle he can see Scott grinning down at him. The sunlight from the window catches in his hair, glinting in the dark strands. (He can also see up Scott's nose, but Stiles manfully refrains from mentioning it.)

"Just for the record," Stiles says, not actually sure what the words are going to be before he says them, "this does not make me the damsel in distress in this relationship."

Scott makes a face. "Duh," he says, eloquently. "You'd look terrible in a dress."

Stiles makes the same face back and whacks him in the knee. "You know what I mean."

Scott softens. "Dude, how many times have you saved my ass since this whole thing started? Like twenty? Nobody thinks you're the damsel in distress."

"I _feel_ like the damsel in distress," Stiles grouses, throwing an arm over his face and letting himself wallow, for a moment, in totally deserved self-pity. The weight of his own mortality presses upon him, a heavy hand on his chest. Whoever said that all teenage boys think they're immortal was an idiot, Stiles thinks bitterly. Stiles just feels fragile. Easily broken.

Scott nudges him with a knee. "You were pretty badass when you ran over Jackson with the Jeep," he offers.

Stiles makes an indistinct noise.

"And when you threw that Molotov cocktail at Peter," Scott continues.

"Ugh, that creep, I can't believe he's alive again," Stiles mutters into his arm.

"Seriously," Scott makes a bitchface, but doesn't let himself get distracted. "And that thing with the mountain ash outside the club, Isaac said you managed to get it to work— that is totally awesome, dude, you have no idea." He's completely sincere, and there's no sign he's about to stop with the compliments, either. He takes a deep breath to continue. "And the time where you-"

"Alright alright alright!" Stiles protests. He sits up and focuses on getting his foot unhooked from the sheets, hiding his face until his ears to stop burning. He can't lie and say he doesn't appreciate the confidence boost, though. Scott's always been good at that, at knowing exactly what to say when Stiles is feeling down, or gets too caught up in his own head. The line of mountain ash at the club— feeling it unspool between his fingers, creating something impossible— that's one of Stiles' good memories. The ones he keeps close, somewhere in his chest, next to his heart. Scott couldn't have done that. Derek couldn't have done that. Nothing can change the fact that Stiles is still a fragile human— at least, no solutions that he wants to consider right now— but okay, maybe he's not _totally_ useless.

He rolls the whistle around in his hand. On the table, his phone buzzes; probably a text message from his dad telling him he's on his way home from work. It reminds Stiles of something, though, and maybe it makes him kind of a terrible person to ask this now, after Scott's been trying so hard to make him feel better, but— "So you'll actually answer this though, right?" He hefts the whistle. "No ignoring it just cause you're on a date with Allison or whatever." He tries to make the words as gentle as possible, but some of the leftover bitterness must bleed through, because Scott winces, looking down at his hands.

"I know I haven't been very good about that lately," Scott says, slowly. "Especially that time with you and Derek and the pool. I shouldn't have hung up on you. It was stupid of me, and I'm sorry." He picks at a loose thread on the edge of his shirt, shoots a quick look up at Stiles to check his reaction, eyes guilty and sad and apologetic.

Stiles cannot hold onto his anger in the face of that look, it blows right past his defenses; has done so ever since that one time when they were five and Scott accidentally snapped the head off Stiles' favorite White Ranger toy, and every day for the next week had given Stiles the peanut-butter pretzels out of his lunch, even though those were Scott's favorite and not something his parents could afford very often and he'd actually bitten Betsy Lewis when she'd tried to take them from him the week before. Those things were sacred, is what Stiles is trying to say, and yet Scott'd passed them over to Stiles every day without saying a word but with that same apologetic look on his face, and yeah. Stiles' defenses, blown away like wet paper in a windstorm.

And okay, so maybe the number of times that Scott has ignored him, or bailed on him, or flat out hung up on him in the last few months, ever since Allison appeared on the scene, has been something of a sore spot with Stiles. But Stiles is not entirely un-self-aware; he knows he'd totally be pulling the same crap if Lydia ever deigned to to offer him even the tiniest scrap of her attention. (Probably worse, if he's being honest. Stiles is not one for half-measures.)

And besides... "Dude, I call you twenty times a day for the stupidest shit," Stiles says, leaning over and punching Scott in the arm. "Last week I called you at six in the morning because I couldn't pick what pair of _underwear_ I should wear. On a _Saturday_. How were you supposed to know that one call was important?"

A smile lightens Scott's face, washing away that look, which was exactly the reaction Stiles had been going for. "Always go for Green Lantern," he says, rubbing his arm and ducking his head against his grin. But then the smile fades, and that look is back again, with an added edge of determination this time. "I need to do better, though," he says. "I need to do better on a lot of things, but this— this is a biggie."

Scott's eyes meet his, and Stiles feels something warm blossom in his chest, the last dregs of his resentment washing away. "Yeah. Yeah, well," he swallows, turning and fumbling in his desk drawer. Shoved in the back, past the half-eaten bag of Doritos hidden so his dad can't get at it, he finds one of those dog-tag type chains curled up. He has no idea where it even came from, it's been there forever. It fits perfectly through the loop on the whistle, thought, and it's long enough that when he snaps the closure together, it slides neatly underneath his shirt. "We can work on that. Together."

Scott grins.

("Does the dog whistle mean you're cool with dog jokes now, though? Because let me tell you, I've got some good ones. Like, okay— what did the dog say to the bartender?"

_"Stiles!"_)


End file.
